


Break

by anactoria



Series: Days in the Light Of [1]
Category: Watchmen (2009)
Genre: Angst, Community: stagesoflove, Gen, Nuclear Warfare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-13
Updated: 2012-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 22:12:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rorschach's dead, Hollis is dead, Laurie's gone. Dan can't say that he blames her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break

**Author's Note:**

> First in a series of linked ficlets written for the stagesoflove challenge community on LJ in 2009. I originally claimed a prompt set for Adrian/Dan, but they don't actually end up together in this. 
> 
> Prompt: Dawn

Dan's eyes hurt. He's been staring blankly at the ceiling, trying to will himself to sleep and not having much luck with it. He never does, lately. The night is too hot and the sheets are sticking to his skin, and the murky streetlight creeping through the gaps in the window blind is dull and insistent as a headache.

He's been having a lot of those recently, too. Stress, he guesses. The lack of sleep, and not being able to figure out what he should _do_ now, and not even having anybody he can actually talk to about it. 

Rorschach's dead, Hollis is dead, Laurie's gone. Two months now since she left, saying that she just couldn't deal with it any longer, the memories and the failure and the center of the city like some giant cenotaph, except that the people who gave their lives didn't fucking sign up for it, and Dan can't say that he blames her. 

(He found a half-empty packet of her cigarettes in the nightstand drawer yesterday, and it didn't bother him, not really. He just sighed, shrugged, and tossed the box into the trash. He's getting over it.)

And the only other person he could speak to-- well.

Dan's gotten past the stage where he curses involuntarily and changes channel every time Adrian's face appears on TV, but now he just finds himself feeling sick and sad instead, which might be worse. He can't even summon up any outrage any more. What's the point?

He sighs, heaves himself out of bed, heads to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water. Yesterday's _Times_ is still lying on the table, front page up. _Russia accuses US of harboring Manhattan._

And that's the kicker. That's what makes him feel hopeless instead of angry, _stupid_ instead of just helpless. Because for a while -- only months ago, and already it's hard to believe -- it actually seemed like Adrian's plan might have worked. Unity. Disarmament talks. International ass-kissing. And then... nothing. Sniping and suspicion. Circumstances sliding back, surely and inexorably, to the way they were.

Adrian called it a practical joke. Dan figures even he didn't know quite how accurate a description that would turn out to be.

And sometimes -- times like this, usually, when he can't sleep and his thoughts turn over and over and he's powerless to stop them -- he does think about speaking to Adrian. Calling him (because, for some reason he doesn't like to look into too deeply, he hasn't scratched the number out of his address book, or torn out the page and thrown it away), or hell, just jumping in Archie and flying over there, banging on Adrian's penthouse window and demanding to know exactly what he plans on doing about this _now_.

He never does. He doesn't have the energy or even the _hope_ for confrontation these days, and he doesn't know what else he could possibly say.

Dan takes a gulp of water, shakes his head. He'll go down to the Nest, he decides. It's cooler there. Maybe he'll be able to relax. The pessimistic part of his brain snorts and tells him there isn't much chance of that, but he goes, anyway. 

So at 02:42, Dan's in his basement, sitting in his pyjamas and trying not to think, and he doesn't see anything when the end of days breaks over the horizon like dawn.


End file.
